Yes, some sort of Avant-go like syncing like my Rexx 6000 had in 2000 is important. I spend all day in a non-wifi environment. I have wifi at home, but I also have three desktop computers there. The amount of time I spend in places where I have wifi but don't have a desktop computer is usually 0%. Syncing would be great, for the times I don't have wifi or a desktop computer.

Thanks to loki and his version of pyplucker (Forum Post, Repository) you can gather relevant news right on your device, whenever you are online, without the need for syncing.

(I assume here in this post you have heard of the excellent FBReader for Maemo, which displays ebooks. Coupled with a PC based web site converter like Sunrise (or others) you can convert arbitrary websites into "take away ebooks" on your device. But this has been a two step solution until now...)

After you installed pyPlucker from the above repository, open an X Terminal on your device. You should execute "plucker-setup" now, but some error message appears, which fails on missing rights on the directory ".plucker" and sometimes ".pluckerrc". After you granted those rights for everyone (search for "how to become root" in this forum), execute "plucker-setup" again. Now it works.

You could now invoke the plucker (the web site converter) by loki's command line (for more reference on the plucker check the Documentation). But I prefer to set up a "home.html" file, which acts as a default for plucker and contains all the news I'd like to update onroad.

A sample is already installed in .plucker, you just have to change it to the news you prefer. I print mine for reference:

Voila, you are ready to start your first plucker by entering "plucker-build". On my WLAN-connection it takes roughly 3-5 minutes for the above 3 sites, which is ok for me in the morning. I tried once over the mobile (3G), but canceled after 10 minutes...

After it finished, there should be a document called "ChrisNews" (or what you have named it ) ready to open with FBReader or Plucker.

By the way: since out beloved tablets are not rockets, you should restrict the updates to the absolutely neccessary pages. It helps to add:

Works in starting the script without an open xterm (so you can't can see when it has finished though...). Can be startet by SimpleLauncher (Just one tap! ). Thanks to Maddler for the template...

Originally Posted by iamthewalrus

Seems like a very useful script! Do you have any plans to make a graphical frontend and single click install/repo ?

I thought about writing a Python frontend, where you could enter the webadress, specify outputfilename, image dimensions etc., in fact did already the user interface design, but so far didn't find the time to implement it. Maybe later...

Cheers and thanks for the hint!

_Chris_

Last edited by _Chris_; 2008-01-25 at 22:38.
Reason: minor correction in destop shortcut